China – EIAS

EU Semiconductor Policy: What ESMC Reveals About Europe’s Joint Venture Strategy

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces the most advanced chips in the world, is positioning itself in a strategic position in the global economy. On one hand, the geopolitical tensions and domestic resource constraints are pushing TSMC to diversify manufacturing overseas. On the other, the European Union seeks to attract investment through the European Chips Act to reduce dependence on external suppliers. It has resulted in the EU–TSMC joint venture “European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC)”, a pilot initiative to assess whether TSMC’s efficient production model can be adopted to Europe. Although the European Chips Act provides subsidies, it fails to address the underlying structural barrier. The sustained EU–TSMC semiconductor ecosystem cannot be built with financial support alone, but requires comprehensive reforms to address regulatory fragmentation across the EU’s single market and knowledge transfer through TSMC’s production and management model. Therefore, to strengthen EU–TSMC cooperation, prioritising regulatory simplification, reducing administrative fragmentation and establishing an exchange and training scheme that facilitates efficiency and training programmes that support operational learning from TSMC’s business model.

CBAM: Barrier or Bridge for EU-China Trade?

Climate governance may be one of the few areas where the EU and China still possess overlapping interests. CBAM could either worsen tensions by forming the basis for another trade dispute, or it could create a narrow but meaningful space for technical cooperation around verification, data quality and standards.

No Cooperation Without Circulation: Why EU–China Talent Mobility Matters

Tightening immigration policies in traditional hubs such as the U.S. creates new opportunities for Europe and China to cooperate in attracting and retaining young European talent in China. This opportunity is not merely theoretical; since Deng Xiaoping’s opening-up reforms in the late 1970s, the outbound flow of Chinese talent to Europe has thrived, resulting in more than 68,000 Chinese students and professionals contributing to Europe’s academic and professional landscape.

Threat or tailwind? Chinese wind turbine manufacturers and the future of European energy

The European wind turbine industry is experiencing increasing competitive pressure from Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), whose rise reflects a national industrial ecosystem built on market-pull innovation, domestic scale, and supply chain integration. As Chinese OEMs expand globally, European policymakers have reacted with protectionist reflex, risking both trade tensions and the deceleration of the very energy transition the European Union has committed to. While the EU is scrambling to boost its competitiveness across several sectors amid the current geopolitical scenario, it needs to reconcile its strategic priorities with cooperative engagement towards the achievement of climate neutrality targets.

EU-China Complementarity Reconsidered: Capability Learning, Market Selectivity and the Future of China-EU SME Cooperation

In the China-EU bilateral trade and investment relationship, the SME dimension deserves to be analysed on its own terms. China-EU SME cooperation is no longer a broad story of market entry, cost arbitrage or one-directional technology transfer. It is becoming a more selective, capability-sensitive relationship shaped by sectoral complementarity, financing conditions and the management of regulatory uncertainty.

Planning for the Future: What Does China’s 15th Five-Year Plan Mean for Europe?

On March 12, 2026, China’s National People’s Congress approved the Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (the Plan), which serves as the country’s blueprint for the five-year period from 2026 to 2030.

EU-China Trade: Facilitating Bilateral Trade Through a Joint Fiat-Backed Stablecoin

This EIAS Briefing Paper explores the implementation of a joint, fiat-backed stablecoin as a tool for facilitating EU-China Trade, which reached a valuation of approximately 762 billion USD in 2024. Despite the high volume of Bank-to-Bank (B2B) transactions, bilateral trade remains tethered to inefficient financial infrastructure characterised by high foreign exchange (FX) markups, third-party reliance, and settlement latencies. These frictions impose systemic costs and lock up billions in working capital. This paper proposes a private fully-collateralised stablecoin pegged to a 50/50 basket of the Euro (EUR) and Offshore Renminbi (CNH). Blockchain architecture and smart contract automation offers the potential of near-instantaneous completely transparent settlement and reductions in transaction costs to a fraction of traditional transfers.

Japan at odds again with its own History

Japan has a new Prime Minister and faces challenges both old and new. A comment from an opposition politician led Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to make a statement on a possible commitment from the Japanese Navy to protect Taiwan. The response from China was quick, but the implications for Takaichi are more telling. Will she reposition Japan globally, or be stopped by the same forces that forced Shinzō Abe to halt his ambitions?

Chinese Banks in the EU: Structures, Functions and Regulatory Challenges

Chinese banks have established themselves in the European Union as key players in financing trade, investment, and business activities between Europe and China. Their special institutional structure in the form of the ‘branch-cum-subsidiary’ model, often established in Luxembourg, allows for high financial flexibility, but also brings regulatory tensions. At the same time, new European regulations on banking supervision, investment control, and economic security are changing the framework of their activities within the union. This leads to challenges and new requirements for a balanced and reciprocal design of EU-China financial relations.